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e9th writes "The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 ruling, has decided that government employers are entitled to examine all text messages sent with government-provided devices, even if the employee has agreed to pay for any excess message charges out of his own pocket. While the ruling only applies to government employees (at all levels), it may give private sector employees something to think about when using employer-provided devices."

Now why would you go and do something silly like pay for your own phone service when you can get the taxpayers to pick up the tab instead?

I know what you're saying, but there may be some good reasons. We have employer issued phones at our workplace with unlimited plans. Making personal calls or sending texts during non-work hours does nothing to change the final bill, so we've been told to use them for our own personal use as well. We're required to have the phones & be "on call." Why would I want to pay for a second phone I don't need?

Which is totally ok. Thing is, people have to treat a cellphone like anything else their employer allows them to use outside of work. If you want to talk dirty to the girl down the hallway, your gona have to find another way to do it. Otherwise you can take the risk.

When are we going to figure out something along the lines of dual-sim phones designed with this sort of use in mind?

I used to have a verizon blackberry from work with a slot for a sim card (since verizon decided using a different standard from the rest of the world was a good idea and now needs to include all the GSM bits to appease business travelers). It would have been much more useful to me if I could put in my personal AT&T sim card and have it just work. Similar to how a BB splits your inboxes

The ability to have multiple lines on a single SIM has existed for years, and such SIMs, operator support and phone support is fairly commonplace in the rest of the world for exactly this kind of issue -- have one line for work, one for personal calls, but only carry one phone.

We have employer issued phones at our workplace with unlimited plans. Making personal calls or sending texts during non-work hours does nothing to change the final bill, so we've been told to use them for our own personal use as well. We're required to have the phones & be "on call." Why would I want to pay for a second phone I don't need?

Technically your employer is supposed to figure out the percentage of business calls vs personal calls and either bill you the difference or include it on your W-2 as a taxable benefit. Few employers actually bother to do this but it is required by the US tax code.

As for "why" you would want to pay for one, I think the headline answers that question. If you value your privacy then you should be willing to pay to ensure it. If employers can monitor your text messages why not your voice conversations?

Technically your employer is supposed to figure out the percentage of business calls vs personal calls and either bill you the difference or include it on your W-2 as a taxable benefit. Few employers actually bother to do this but it is required by the US tax code.

Actually, it's still under debate... the IRS has not issued a final ruling on inclusion of company-paid cell phone charges as taxable fringe benefits.

Companies are not required to itemize charges and bill and/or include as taxable fringe; they can instead use some flat percentage.

But in practice, the IRS doesn't pursue the cell phone issue much -- if there are a lot of other taxable fringe that is escaping tax, they may include it, but if that's your only questionable item, they'll let it go.

I'm not your tax accountant or tax lawyer, so don't take what I've written as sound advice. It's just my experience with dealing with the IRS on this issue for my past couple employers.

I'm in the exact same boat, but I've never considered giving up my personal phone, and the why seems obvious to me. I pay for a second phone so that my employer has no say in or knowledge of what I do with it. You obviously don't have to have your own phone, but you can't have it both ways. If you use your employers phone, it's their phone, not yours, and they'll do what they want when it comes to monitoring usage. It's not your phone, you have no right to complain about it.

So you can send private texts and calls that your employer isn't allowed to see.So you can deal drugs with it.So you can buy drugs with it.So you can watch porn on it.So you can make your own porn with it.So you can sext your girlfriend and MMS pictures of your cock to her.So you can text your best friend the lurid details of your latest sexual conquest.

I can think of lots of reasons someone would want a second phone not financed by their employer. Most of these reasons involve stuff you don't want your employer to know about or see.

If you are straight edged AND boring, there is no reason. If you like to live dangerously on the fringe or are sexually adventurous, get your own phone. It's a necessity if you regularly have unprotected textual intercourse.

So you can text your best friend the lurid details of your latest sexual conquest.

If you can fit the lurid details of your latest sexual conquest into 160 characters then it probably wasn't all that impressive;) Besides, everybody knows that those conversations need to happen over a pint of beer....

Msg: Hey Bob, check this out. You know how the bosses daughter is really fucking hot?Msg: I was talking to her in the elevator. She asked how big my cock is, so I told her to check for herself.Msg: We skipped our floor, and went up to 11. You know, the floor that no one uses.Msg: She jumped up and wrapped her legs around me. I carried her to that corner office.Msg: She ripped my clothes off. Her clothes came off like they were nothing.Msg: You wouldn't believe how perfect her body is. She's 21, so it's all good.Msg: She started sucking my cock right there. I guess she liked how big it is.:)Msg: I started fucking the shit out of her, and she came twice before I knew it.Msg: then she wanted me to fuck her in the ass. God it was tight.Msg: After I came in her ass, she wanted to suck me clean. What a dirty slut.Msg: I already emailed my super and told him I'm home sick today.Msg: We're going out for drinks when she can walk again, and then to a hotel.Msg: shit don't tell my wife. I'll call her and tell her we're having a work emergency, and I won't be home.Msg: shit, did I send that to your work phone? Make sure you delete all of the msgs!

Nah, it'd all fit in text messages. Unfortunately, since you didn't come into work, you didn't know Bob got fired this morning, and the phone was sitting on the bosses desk in case any texts or calls came in from customers. Worse than that, his daughter is only 17. She has a fake ID so she can drink. Tomorrow is not going to be your day. The boss is thinking "Call the cops, or just kill him. The bastard will die."

If only you had consulted with the BOFH first. Always ask the BOFH for advice. BOFH knows all and sees all, even the video from the 11th floor, that he'll be putting online in about 5 minutes, under your name. Not only would he have warned you she was only 17, he would have emailed you her last STD report. It wasn't good. It won't matter much, you won't live to see the weekend.

Or, moving away from doing things you perhaps ought not do... what if you're talking to prospective employers? What if you're going through issues in your personal life which are messy or acrimonious (ie. divorce) and simply can't let them to overlap with your job? What if your employer views all other employment, regardless of nature, as a conflict of interest and will act vindictively toward employees who take them on? What if you just don't want your employer to know what you do on your own time, because

Now why would you go and do something silly like pay for your own phone service when you can get the taxpayers to pick up the tab instead?

I know what you're saying, but there may be some good reasons. We have employer issued phones at our workplace with unlimited plans. Making personal calls or sending texts during non-work hours does nothing to change the final bill, so we've been told to use them for our own personal use as well. We're required to have the phones & be "on call." Why would I want to pay for a second phone I don't need?

See, what you are missing is that the original poster just knows all government employees are lazy, time wasting bearucrats intent on sucking up as much taxpayer money while doing as little as possible in return. You are just trying to use facts to point out the stupidity of his assumptions; and trying to take money out of the poor corporations who would profit from all those employees having to spend money on personal cell phones, energy that won't be consumed by having to keep two phones charged, material

Easy to answer: Use it all you want, but assume that your employer will see everything you do. If you want to do something without them knowing, then use your own device. It isn't YOURS. Go ahead and call mom, order that pizza, call a cab, use it for anything that you are fine with it being public, but nothing else.

My experience is that you are better off if you act like everything you do is completely public, be it on any phone, computer, device. Even with the best proxies and encryption, it still *almost* is. If you need to do something that requires no one knowing, then expect that you will have to take extraordinary steps. Simply texting on your company phone is NOT "extraordinary steps".

A few reasons:So when you leave the company or get fired you won't lose the phone # and have to tell everyone you know your new #? If you are fired hopefully you wrote down all of your personal numbers from your phone book before security takes it away.

So your employer doesn't have access to a record of every call you make. If someone higher up is looking for a reason to fire you, they may start looking at your call activity and suddenly that phone call to a friend that works at a competitor will get you

Now why would you go and do something silly like pay for your own phone service when you can get the taxpayers to pick up the tab instead?

I know what you're saying, but there may be some good reasons. We have employer issued phones at our workplace with unlimited plans. Making personal calls or sending texts during non-work hours does nothing to change the final bill, so we've been told to use them for our own personal use as well. We're required to have the phones & be "on call." Why would I want to pay for a second phone I don't need?

Because you don't want your boss to know exactly who you're calling or texting?

What happens when you leave the company and they don't let you take the number with you?

And yes I have a company provided cell, and I still pay for my own to keep my business my own.

Ok, so the company has an asset. If they let you, you can use it, and there is no incremental cost to them. BUT, it's still up to them (1) whether to let you use it, and (2) if so, under what terms. Your employer has agreed to let you use it, so that puts (1) out of the way; but what about (2)? If they haven't specifically agreed otherwise, the terms include "you are making information like your call history available to us whether you realize it or not", because that's what naturally happens when you b

When I was working for companies (oohh, I need a job), I carried my work phone and private phone. Personal calls and texts were on the personal phone. Work calls and texts were on the work phone.

There was such a huge difference in the texts.

On the work phone, about 1000 texts/day saying things were up, down, or 999 other bogus status messages. And people wondered why "emergency" texts were missed. Of course they were. After the first 10k status messages, you learn to tune out the beep, or mute 'em.

On the personal phone, about 3 texts/month saying my friends network had problems. The remainder of the texts were the occasional "are you available", "yes" and "call me", being sent in both directions.

I don't really want my employer having access to my texts, nor the list of people I talk to. My friends are none of their business. And for the sake of the business, personal calls on the personal phone don't cost the company anything.:) I burnt up enough minutes on the work phone from remote datacenters, sitting in on hour long conference calls to talk about what we were already doing. "Yup, we're here. We're doing it. We'll be done in a few hours if we don't have to sit in on yet another conference call."

Watch for the other shoe to drop. Once this precedent is firmly established in the public and private sectors, the only remaining step is to ban personal devices so there is no possible way to communicate that isn't subject to search, surveillance or other forms of monitoring. There are already workplaces that ban personal laptops from accessing the network, or ban phones with cameras (good luck finding such a device these days), quite often for good reason (any defense-related job, for example, or jobs

His department head made a verbal promise (in contradiction to written policy) that said it was OK to use the department equipment if the employee paid any overage fees.Since the costs were flat rate, use-it-or-lose-it, that policy seemed entirely reasonable to me.

I've only read a summary of the decision - that the court ruled the department had an interest in controlling costs so they were free to do whatever they wanted - but it sure sounds like a bullshit ruling to me.

Agree and with disposable phone in the 9$ range with 20$ card and txts at.10 each it seems they could use something other than the government provided phone.

Now how about a ruling that all government agencies have to keep copies of all texts and make them part of the public record to promote transparency in government. That would be news and something I would be interested in. lol

I'm more worried about the fact that the wireless company kept a transcript of the text messages than I am about the fact that some municipal government kept a copy of them. What legitimate purpose is served by a wireless provider retaining copies of text messages that have been successfully delivered to the end user?

No, the Government only compels them to keep the pen-register data, i.e: who you called/texted and when. I am unaware of any law or regulation that compels them to retain copies of the actual messages. If you have a citation for such a law in the United States I would be most interested in reading it.

You were probably also unaware of the government withholding contracts from telcos unless they participated in their little warrantless wiretapping venture back after 9/11, at least until Qwest refused to participate and got their contracts cancelled and their CEO sued.

It doesn't take laws or regulations to pull the strings of corporations, only money.

The ruling was for devices provided by the government, did you expect anything less? If it was for your own personal phone, that would be different.

Exactly! Just don't use a government device for any private stuff and you'll be fine. It's not like all your communication has to go through it -- presumably just the work related things, which are not particlarly private. I don't care who reads my work emails/sms-es/etc as long as my personal phone is off limits.

While you are correct that the best bet is to simply not use the department-issued device for personal texts, the lieutenant specifically stated that the text messages would not be audited. Then they changed their minds and started auditing them. He had a reasonable expectation of privacy, it would seem.

The oral argument at the Supreme Court hearing from both sides can be read here [supremecourt.gov]

While you are correct that the best bet is to simply not use the department-issued device for personal texts, the lieutenant specifically stated that the text messages would not be audited.

My supervisor can promise anything at work, but that doesn't mean he had the authority to do so. Also policies can be changed by your employer at any time unless you had a contract with your employment or the change violates some law.

That might explain why it is a 9/0 ruling, which is rare. It would seem common sense that if you use any employer supplied device (phone, computer, whatever) that the employer has the right to view what traverses their network and devices. This case might have been about the government as an employer, but I would expect no less protection for the private sector. And yes, protection is the right word. If you start making threats to someone (as an example) using company property, they might could be held

And if you company wants to issue you a cell phone, you can always tell them "Thanks but no thanks, I only want to carry one phone. How about a monthly stipend to offset the cost of my personal phone?"

It's still your phone, your employer is just helping pay for their usage of it. Your privacy should remain intact. (IANAL etc.)

If they say no, carry two phones or find a better employer. Simple enough.

The same reason as if you came to my house and used my computer to check your email. It's my computer, I can do anything I want with it, including incremental screen shots, keystroke logging, and packet sniffing. When you leave, it's all fair game.

Where I used to work, they provided us with BlackBerries. However, they also had a plan where you paid the company $15 per month, and you could use it as your personal phone as well. Unlimited minutes, unlimited data, it seemed like a pretty good deal. Even if they monitored text messages and such, it's not like my messages were racy or too terribly private.

Then they locked out Gmail. Oh, and they blocked MMS messages. And prevented me from installing

The ruling was for devices provided by the government, did you expect anything less?

To their credit, enforcement of government regulations seems pretty hit and miss. The guy was on SWAT, so he may have been expecting this to go the way of so many investigations into police misconduct. And there may have been some revenge motives behind this rather than sound legal reasoning: he sued the city after "...transcripts showed that Quon had been exchanging sexually explicit messages with his wife, his girlfriend and another SWAT team member."

Your employer having access to things you do with IT equipment they furnish is pretty much standard operating procedure, and has been for some time now. I'm having some trouble understanding how this even got to the Supreme Court. The fact that the government allowed them to use the devices for personal messaging doesn't mean that it gave up the right to see what they were doing with them.

I think it actually had merit, but only because there is precedent with the phone. If you are an average government employee (not a classified position, let's exclude those for this argument), and you use their land line telephone to call home, are you entitled to privacy? It's a legit argument, but the supreme court ruled "use your own" and that's that.

I'm having some trouble understanding how this even got to the Supreme Court.

From an AP article I read earlier, it was because the officer in the case was told when he received the device that as long as he paid any extra costs, his activity wouldn't be examined. This wasn't a formal policy, though. The 9th Circuit court said that the informal policy was enough to give the officer an expectation of privacy, and the Supreme Court disagreed.

My wife’s job wanted her to use her personal Blackberry for work emails and such. I told her that you always have to keep it separate because:
- what if you leave?
- what if we go over our data? Are they going to pay the overage? can we prove it was because of work stuff?
- what if you accidently send work things to personal contacts and vice versa?
It opens too many issues. If work wants you to have a device for work, they provide and pay for it and you use it ONLY for work. Simple.

It seems like there is an interesting business opening here: Selling multiple contracts for a single device. It shouldn't be too hard to write some software that allows users to switch context on a device to separate work and personal stuff. Get to it, you money hungry corporate sharks!

I agree. When I use my corporate email account, I am speaking as a representative of my employer and I expect that they may monitor what I say. Considering that they can be held accountable in a court of law for what I say in an email from my corporate account, that only makes sense.

SMS is broadcast over the air unencrypted. There should be no expectation of privacy.

You mean that you have to have special equipment to receive the message if you're not the intended recipient? I guess that means there should be no expectation of privacy with postal mail either, since with special equipment you can easily read other people's mail.

He was most likely thinking of pagers, which are unencrypted and require no special equipment to monitor. If you have a radio receiver which can tune the appropriate frequencies (many ham radios and scanners readily available at retail stores) and a computer you can decode any pager messages sent on towers you can "hear".

That said, how are you making a logical leap from something being broadcast unencrypted over the air to opening mail? The snail-mail equivalent would be if a postcard was mailed to everyo

I doubt SMS interception equipment is readily available to the general public, which means unauthorized third party interception, use, and disclosure is almost certainly illegal (at least in the United States) - cf. 18 USC 2511(2)(g).

Not that that would affect this case. The employer had implicit authorization. It also doesn't mean you shouldn't take the non-encryption into account when choosing what to send of course.

Actually it really doesn't. Old fashioned cordless telephones were rarely encrypted but it was still a violation of Federal law to monitor them. It was also made illegal to sell scanners that were capable of tuning to the frequencies that they used.

Would this also lead to your own personal device that an employer pays a portion of the bill to also give them rights to view your records? I bought my device and have an account in my name, but my employer reimburses a portion of the bill to me since I am on call every other week and get pages sent via SMS to the device.

Common sense would say no as you own the device and your employer is compensating you for using your equipment but common sense isn't as common as it sounds so I suspect it would take a Supreme Court decision to answer!

Would this also lead to your own personal device that an employer pays a portion of the bill to also give them rights to view your records?

It certainly gives them a foot in the door. Personally, I'd rather eat the expense myself than risk privacy intrusions from some of the companies I've worked for. Alternatively, one might get a separate prepaid phone for work use so that one's personal phone is off-limits.

In this case I would assume that the device and service are _yours_ _alone_ unless you specifically signed away any rights to your privacy by accepting reimbursement.

If you never sign away your privacy then I would assume the default is that it is your phone, service and privacy. If it was work issued (like the article details) then work owns it regardless of what money you put into it.

Now I'm curious, what does the reimbursement form I use for work actually say.....

I am a big fan of privacy, but if you are a government employee using a governmen provided device to communicate then the government has the right to examine that communication, if only to discover whether or not it is is official business (which they pay for) or personal (which you pay for). In fact that was exactly how they discovered the data.

My first reaction was like most here - it's an employer-provided device, so why would you expect privacy? However, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act says that while employers have the right to monitor employee's phone conversations, they must stop if/when they realize that the conversation is personal, not business.

Good point. I don't understand why people make the distinction between them being government employees or not. I don't think it should matter. Both employees in the public and private sector really should be able to expect the same level (or lack) of privacy from their employer.

"The court in December refused to hear a related appeal from Arch Wireless, now a unit of USA Mobility Inc., the nation’s largest provider of paging services. The 9th Circuit court said the company violated a federal electronic-privacy law by providing the transcript without seeking Quon’s permission".

So the Supreme Court ruled that the department had the legal authority to review the pager messages, but the 9th Circuit says the service provider violated a federal law in turning

Both can happen, one way would be for the search to be legit based on an employer exception but since the turnover did not confirm who they were giving it too his 4th amendment rights may have been violated. Not saying that is what happened just that these things are not necessarily in contradiction.

So the Supreme Court ruled that the department had the legal authority to review the pager messages, but the 9th Circuit says the service provider violated a federal law in turning over the records without Quon's permission?

The legal authority to review them if they have a copy of them, yes. The department cannot force the provider to violate the law, however.

After someone like Kwame Kilpatrick (former mayor of Detroit) exchanged 14,000 text messages [wikipedia.org] with his chief of staff (both married to other people), most of which were related to their sexual affair with one another and others which were about illegally firing another government employee and I believe a bribery scandal (this has been local news here for a while), I'm not surprised they are finally doing this.

What I'd really like to know, is how the hell someone could send 14k text messages between September/October 2002 and April/May 2003. All the illegal and corrupt stuff aside... If that time period is accurate that means they were exchanging over 50 text messages a day... what the fuck.

This is exactly how it should be. And it should extend to private employers as well as government. We live in an age where companies can be, and routinely are, punished for employees using company equipment for sexual harassment, etc. If I can be held responsible for what my employees do with my equipment, then I'm going to monitor its usage and I don't give a damn what employees think of it. Period.

That's the only conclusion I can come to based on the absolute horribleness of the summary. The fact is, these devices are owned by the employer in question. So going from the principle that employers can already monitor telephone conversations on equipment they own and monitor email communications on equipment they own, there is absolutely no legal justification for them to be prevented from monitoring texts on equipment they own.

Want privacy from your employer? Go spend $40 a month and get your own cell p

we just kind of assume employers occasionally audit the use of company property. That includes physical things likes computers, pagers, cellphones. And virtual things like company networks(what use internally), VPN usage, company internet gateways(what sites you access externally), company IM services(jabber, lotus sametime, whatever), emails, and file servers.

It is not unusual for an IT department to look at your back-ups and question your judgment in filling your work computer's backup folder with personal MP3s.

Just because you take a phone and laptop home every night doesn't mean it is your personal property.

it just seems obvious that government employees would have to operate under the same environment as the rest of us. Maybe if the government operated like they can fail if they don't behave in a competitive way some of our problems would just go away. That's just wild conjecture on my part though.

But I do have a work laptop. And there's a lot that I won't do on it that I do all the time on my home machine. The fact is, my work machine isn't really MY machine! It's their's! So, I do my business on their crap, and have fun on my own crap.

There's a limited amount of real estate on my body. Requiring me to carry a device when I'm not on the clock and claiming the right to review everything I do with it seems too intrusive. Sure, I can carry two phones, but why should I have to?

Now if you can provide me a device with two lines, one private and one for work, you can go ahead and knock yourself out spying on my work line. I work for a state government and pay for my own phone because it's not worth dealing with the crap that comes attached to a work phone.

That's completely accurate. The opinion holds that it is assumed but not decided that Quon had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the text messages (see e.g. III-A [p. 9]).

A REOP doesn't mean you can't be searched. It means that searches have to comply with the Fourth Amendment. This search did comply, given the workplace exception, pp. 15-16, and therefore the city is entitled to conduct such audits of the equipment it pays for.